Celebrity hairstylist Ken Paves on coiffing Disney's newest fairy

He made a name for himself by styling the locks of stars like Jessica Simpson, Eva Longoria and Victoria Beckham, but hairstylist Ken Paves says that working with his newest client – a five and a half inch tall animated fairy – “is probably the greatest thing I have ever done.”

Paves devised the signature hairstyle for Periwinkle (twin sister of Tinker Bell), who makes her debut in Disney’s The Secret of the Wings,a straight to DVD and Blu-ray release out today. And the stylist says it took more than hairspray and bobby pins to come up with a ‘do for the character (voiced by Lucy Hale).

“I met with the story writers and the director, and they described [the process] so I could understand,” Paves said of wrapping his head around creating a 3-D hairstyle for a CGI character. “She lands really fast and it’s really cold [where she lives], so we thought she should have an icy, aerodynamic style.” Working from sketches of the character, he conceptualized his 360-degree vision of Peri’s spiky shag.

Next, Paves custom dyed a wig, fitted it to a live model, and spent six hours sculpting the hairstyle while Disney animators captured the action on film. ”I created the wig was so that they could see how the hair would actually move when Peri was flying,” Paves said. “The shape was very important, it had to have an organic water-drop feel, but with the solid look of ice.”

The star hairstylist hopes that Periwinkle’s hairstyle will do more than just spark a new beauty trend in the fairy-tale world.

“A fairy character with short hair hasn’t been done before, as far as I know,” said Paves, who was also commissioned to create a line of Disney beauty products (called “I Believe”) that will land in stores next spring. “Girls grow up thinking that they have to have this long, flaxen hair, and [when they grow up into women], the beauty industry preys on them by telling them what’s wrong with them. I think it’s great that there’s a character that girls with short hair can identify with.”